Dozens of power trucks, support vehicles and crews from Mississippi and Kentucky are using the massive parking lots at BB&T Center in Sunrise as a staging area. GEORGE RICHARDSgrichards@miamiherald.com

Dozens of power trucks, support vehicles and crews from Mississippi and Kentucky are using the massive parking lots at BB&T Center in Sunrise as a staging area. GEORGE RICHARDSgrichards@miamiherald.com

More than a million statewide lost power during Hurricane Matthew

With Hurricane Matthew moving on, repair crews were making steady progress in restoring power to the more than 170,000 South Florida homes and businesses that lost electricity during the storm — but more than a million were in the dark statewide Friday night.

By 9 p.m. Friday, 310 customers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were still without electricity, Florida Power & Light said, a small percentage of the nearly 56,000 in the two counties who lost electricity at some point during the storm.

Problems remained in Palm Beach County, where 14,850 FPL customers remained in the dark as of 9 p.m. Friday, according to the utility. Even there, though, things were looking up: 96,060 others who lost power were back on the grid.

The numbers were far less favorable in the northern part of the state, where Matthew wreaked havoc. More than 1.1 million customers of FPL and other power companies were dark Friday evening, according to Gov. Rick Scott’s office.

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FPL, the state’s largest electric company, was hit the hardest, reporting that 681,000 homes and businesses — 14 percent of its 4.8 million customers — were without power by 6 p.m. Friday, according to state emergency management officials.

The two biggest areas hit: Brevard County — home to Melbourne, Titusville and Merritt Island — and Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach. As of 9 p.m. Friday, FPL reported that 152,595 of its customers in Brevard were without power, or about half of its customers there. In Volusia, FPL said 164,190 had lost power, or about 94 percent of its customers.

Jacksonville Electric Authority, the municipal power company that serves the territory facing major flooding Friday, reported 208,000 customers without power at 7 p.m. Friday, according to state emergency management officials. Duke Energy said that 164,000 customers faced outages at the end of the day, and another 6,000 customers to cooperative electrics said power was down.